For nearly a century, residents and visitors of Vancouver have had a long-standing love affair with the spring’s flowering cherry trees, their legacy symbolizing the generosity of Japanese Canadians and the Japanese government.
In 1925, the mayors of Kobe and Yokohama presented the Vancouver Park Board with five hundred trees of the Ojochin variety for planting at the cenotaph in Stanley Park, in honour of Japanese Canadian veterans of WWI. These plantings varied significantly from the usual trees on Vancouver’s boulevards and in parks, which had taken the form of large, stately shades (elms, maples, chestnuts, and planes) since the 1800s. The 1930s through the ‘50s saw Park Board staff sowing cherry tree seeds in significant numbers thanks to contributions from Japanese Canadians. For instance, local business owners and philanthropists Bunjiro and Kimi Uyeda donated a thousand cherry trees in 1935 in anticipation of Vancouver’s golden jubilee. Due to financial and labour hindrances during the Depression, however, these trees would not be planted until April 1942, three months after the Uyeda family was interned and forcibly relocated to Kaslo.
In the mid-20th century, cherry trees began to reshape Vancouver’s landscape and shift established practices of the Park Board. In particular, as elms, maples, and other like varieties had grown to their full maturity, attendant problems became increasingly evident. Public complaints about roots invading sewer lines, canopies interfering with utility lines, and heaving sidewalks led the Park Board to reconsider the planting of large trees. Indeed, the Park Board’s 1954 Annual Report enumerated “upwards of 80,000 trees on our boulevards throughout the city, many of which were planted fifty years ago by the homeowners and which were mainly elms, maples, chestnuts, acacias and other trees which have grown to an enormous size. In this wet climate trees grow fast and we have quite a problem on our hands keeping these old trees within limits.” Alongside utility companies, the Park Board began removing problematic large varieties. In their place, Park Board gardeners were planting flowering plum, cherry, hawthorn, and crabapple trees, as then-board supervisor Bill Livingstone announced at the annual meeting of the Northwest Parks Association. Smaller ornamental trees, he explained, “give better value in colour and decorative effect but also save damage to pavements and sewers.” Livingstone attributed the introduction of ornamental street lighting to these smaller flowering trees for their averaging 20-25 feet in height. In 1958, three hundred more cherry trees were donated by the Japanese consul Muneo Tanabe as a symbol of friendship between Canada and Japan. These trees were soon planted along Cambie Boulevard, between 49th and 33rd Avenues, in Queen Elizabeth Park, and around the cenotaph in Stanley Park.
In 1961, the Park Board hired its first full-time arborist to inaugurate a tree-selection program accounting for Vancouver’s climate and growing conditions. Suitable varieties were propagated in the Park Board’s newly acquired nursery; of the 2,500 trees planted that year, most were flowering and smaller species. The trend toward planting ornamental flowering cherries and plums continued through the next few decades. By the time the Park Board completed its first comprehensive street tree inventory in 1990, nearly 36 percent of the 89,000 trees on city streets were of the Prunus genus—the flowering plum and cherry trees. Of the inventory’s 479 classifications of trees, the most common species was Prunus serrulata Kwanzan, the Kwanzan flowering cherry (12.6 percent), followed by Prunus cerasifera, the Pissard plum (12.4 percent).
The 1990s saw a new era of intensive tree planting with the development of the Park Board’s urban forest plan. This new plan recommended a wider variety of tree species on streets and in parks to increase diversity and thereby maintain a healthy urban forest. Correspondingly, Akebono cherries, which fare extremely well in Vancouver’s rainy climate, became much more prevalent. The Greater Vancouver Regional District’s 1990 Clouds of Change report also adjusted tree planting practices through its recommendation of large deciduous trees for their environmental benefits. In recent decades, the Park Board has continued to plant the beloved flowering cherry trees in high-profile areas while returning to larger varieties where appropriate.
2025 marks a century since the historic introduction of the Ojochin tree to Vancouver. Over the past hundred years, cherry trees have enticed and enamoured locals and visitors alike; their significance to the city’s arboricultural, cultural, and social landscapes is abundant. The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival is grateful to the Japanese Canadians whose contributions continue to make the city flourish, and we will celebrate their legacy for years to come.
Amila Li
Program Coordinator
- The memorial was initially built to commemorate the 54 Japanese Canadians who died fighting with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I. 168 survived, only to fight again for the right to vote. Japanese Canadian soldiers who have fought since that time are also commemorated. For more on the Japanese Canadian War Memorial, see https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/national-inventory-canadian-memorials/details/4217.
- As of 2024, four of the thousand trees from the Uyedas are believed to be remaining. For more on the Uyeda family, see Fiona Tinwei Lam’s poem “Gift” and blog post “The origin of cherry trees in Vancouver’s parks and boulevards” at https://fionalam.net/2024/12/01/a-poem-about-local-history/ and Nina Shoroplova’s Legacy of Trees.
- Much gratitude to former Vancouver Park Board Communications Coordinator Carol DeFina, without whose meticulous research this history page would not have been possible.